Visual System Research Paper

The visual system is extremely important in the human body. Though not essential to life, it allows people to monitor and process the world around them much more easily. The visual system is responsible for allowing people to not only see objects but also see those objects in color, be able to determine if they are moving, and even establish distance. Although the idea of vision seems simple at first, it is a very complex process made up of many minute parts. The eye is often compared to a camera because similarly it can capture an image, process it, and then store it for later recall. The mechanics behind capturing that image is similar in both. Capturing an image starts as soon as light bounces of an object and hits the eye. The light filters through the cornea and lens into the retina at the back of the eye; a process called refraction. After light passes through the cornea but before light passes through the lens, the iris causes the pupil to constrict and dilate to regulate the amount …show more content…
The cones are located primarily in the macula and control color and fine-tuned vision. The rods are located outside the macula allow for night vision, peripheral vision, and the ability it sense motion. Together, they turn the light into electrical impulses to be sent to the brain. The electrical impulses travel by way of ganglion cells through the optic nerve into the brain (Rogers, 2010). When the impulses hit an area called the chiasm, information from the central vision crosses over to the opposite side from which it was originally seen, meets up with the peripheral information from the current side, and continues up the optic tracts to the primary visual cortex where it is processed. This crossing over allows for seeing a single image instead of two separate one (Rogers, 2010). Each specific photoreceptor in the retina corresponds to a specific neuron within the primary visual cortex, used for